photo credit: zeraien (flickr)

As an avid fan of Law and Order, these real life events seem to come straight from one of the show’s fictional story lines.

20 men are now in custody for transporting large amounts of cocaine, meth and heroin from the San Francisco Bay Area to Seattle.

The dealers are being charged with a variety of crimes including conspiracy, after apparently using ciphers to discuss deals and drug quantities openly.

“One of the more clever tactics used by the dealers was calling kilos of cocaine ‘houses’, and using addresses as prices. For example, when [...] the alleged ringleader of the local cartel, was overheard telling a potential customer that he should visit house number 23, it was (again, allegedly) a way of saying the brick of blow would cost 23 grand,” according to an article from the Seattle Weekly. Read more…

“It’s a girl!” said The Seattle Times article, regarding the gender of Seattle Aquarium’s newest edition of otters.

Early Saturday morning on Jan. 14, mama otter Aniak gave birth to her healthy newborn. Visitors that day created a crowd around the area to snap some photos and watch in delight as Aniak nursed for the first time what visitors called a “fluffy” and “adorable” baby otter. All the while, an otter-watch team set up equipment to monitor the mom and pup every five minutes.

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You can feel it coming a mile away. It may start with fever blisters in your mouth or lack of energy during a day. You may try and ignore it but sooner or later you will wake up with a stuffed nose and a headache that just won’t go away. You’ll be sick.

In college, getting sick makes your daily routine about 100 times harder than it already is. You’ll be struggling to stay awake in class or you’ll be just so miserable that even watching a movie seems like a tremendous task. Worst come to worst you may even stay home and catch up on your favorite TV show while nursing your cold.

Be this your first cold on campus or 20th it always helps to have a game plan. Below are nine things that make having a cold seem more manageable.

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Photo Credit: Jeremy Beckman

Following a government shutdown of the content-sharing site Megaupload.com, the collective known as Anonymous crashed three major government sites along with six others yesterday afternoon.

According to Fox News, the FBI charged Megaupload’s founders with various internet privacy crimes and shut down the popular file-sharing site yesterday afternoon. Following up on angry tweets that threatened to crash several prominent websites in response to the indictment, Anonymous quickly retaliated. Within hours, the group targeted nine websites, calling the attack “OpMegaupload,” according to Time Magazine.

The global cyber-collective claims to have taken down the websites of the Department of Justice (DOJ), FBI, U.S. Copyright Office, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Universal Music Group, France’s copyright enforcement agency, Warner Music Group, Broadcast Music, Inc. and the Utah Chiefs of Police Association. Instead of shutting down utahchiefs.org like the others, Anonymous altered the site to show a large Megaupload logo, according to Fox News.

Early Thursday afternoon, Megaupload was accused of copyright violations spanning over $500 million in revenue losses. Four people were arrested as a result of the accusation and the site closed, according to Time Magazine. Approximately an hour after Megaupload’s indictment, the DOJ site was first to crash. Although most sites appear to be functioning now, Universalmusic.com and utahchiefs.org are the last to fully reboot; both sites were still down as of 1 p.m. today.

The hacker collective boasted that their shutdown of nine sites was the “largest attack ever crippling government and music industry sites,” according to Time Magazine. The group also claimed that 5,635 people were involved in the takedown at its climax.

Anonymous is best known for a string of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in 2008 through which the collective famously shutdown the Church of Scientology website, according to The Register. The group is also suspected in 2011’s extended shutdown of the PlayStation Network. Recognized by Guy Fawkes masks from V for Vendetta, CNN has named Anonymous one of the top successors to WikiLeaks.

photo credit: mothernature photography (flickr)

After much deliberation, Obama rejected the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline plan on Wednesday. Obama attributes this rejection due to Congress’s inability to adequately review the plan within the 60-day deadline.

The pipeline, which would start in Alberta, Canada, routes through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma, to stop at a plant in Texas.

Even though a decision has been made for now, the GOP and supporters of the new pipeline are not bowing down yet. TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline plan, is still able to submit a new course. This new proposal will be routed through a different area in Nebraska, in order to avoid the sandhills that are environmentally unstable.

“The postponement of a final call is seen as a politically strategic move by the President, who has been caught in the middle between two groups: environmentalists who oppose the project and the pro-business groups — and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives — advocating for it,” according to an article by the NY Daily News.

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via english.people

Hills and traffic don’t intimidate Seattleites.

But snow sure does.

With predictions of a foot of snow this week, people are bracing themselves for what some are calling The Winter Storm of 2012.

I sense a great apocalypse movie coming on starring the Space Needle.

Though snow is a regular occurrence in many other cities nationwide, it’s a bit of a commodity here. The next few days could find us under more snow than Seattle has seen in 30 years, according to the Capitol Hill Blog.

I am a native to eastern Washington, where snow is expected every winter and drivers know to get chains for their tires regardless of the forecast. Due to19 years of experience in white Christmases, I have developed some great guidelines for taking full advantage of the snow.

In preparation of this incredible storm headed our way, I will share those with you now. Read more…

via coasthillsrunningclub

Exercise doesn’t just give you endorphins.

Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School published a study this week about a newly discovered hormone produced during exercise that lessens one’s susceptibility to age-related obesity and diabetes.

Though scientists are certain there is a sort of “conversation” between muscle and fat cells during exercise, the exact reasons for this have previously remained unclear.

The study looked into the interaction of muscle and fat cells and how exercise acts as a spark for that conversation. Scientists used human and mouse muscle cells to focus on a substance called PGC1-alpha which is produced in the muscles during and after exercise.

Professor of cell biology and medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Bruce Spiegelman led the study.

“It seems clear that PGC1a stimulates many of the recognized health benefits of exercise,” he said in a New York Times article. When bred to produce large amounts of PGC1a in their muscles, mice were generally resistant to age-related obesity and diabetes. This is similar to the effect regular exercise has on the muscles of humans.

Subsequently, an increased amount of PGC1a in muscles caused a boost in the appearance of Fndc5, a protein that has interested scientists, though they weren’t previously sure of its purpose.

What Harvard researchers discovered was that the protein breaks apart in pieces which include a hormone they named “irisin”. Birthed in the muscles, irisin moves into the bloodstream where it begins turning regular fat into brown fat.

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